For months, Peckham Rye Station has been clad in scaffolding but soon commuters will be able to witness the station in its former Victorian glory.
The restoration project is being overseen by architect Benedict O’Looney and funded by Network Rail with contributions from the Railway Heritage Trust and the Heritage of London Trust
Works include cleaning the Suffolk brick and Bath stonework, renewing the lower roofs with hand-pressed clay tiles, and restoring the upper roofs’ lost iron cresting.
On completion at the end of the year, the front facade will be expertly illuminated so commuters can rediscover the building’s elaborate detailing.
The station, opened in 1865, was designed by the renowned British architect Charles Henry Driver, the creative mind behind Brighton’s West Pier Pavillion and Preston and West Lancashire Stations.
Benedict O’Looney, the project’s Lead Architect, said: “It was designed by a really top Victorian architect and we’ve learned a great deal from working on this.
“We’ve learned he was this amazing architect doing not only these showy stations but that he was also a brilliant cast iron designer.”
Benedict has overseen the re-making and gilding of the new cast metal crestings which were originally designed by Driver.
“It’s beyond the basic architecture that proliferates nowadays. These wild florid organic forms – tendril-like things – bring botanical forms into industrial design.
“It’s this idea of bringing art and organic form to the everyday person.”
The restorations are a prelude to the Peckham Rye Station enhancement plans, submitted to the council by Network Rail earlier this year, following years of consultation.
The project, expected to cost tens of millions, involves building a new rear entrance, wider platforms, larger gate lines and improved disabled access.
Resoration to the facades is the latest chapter in over a decade’s worth of projects at the station.
Since 2009, Benedict’s practice, Benedict O’Looney Architects, have restored the Old Waiting Room and forecourt windows, the North Wing interior, and the station’s lost 1930s loos.
Describing the station’s style as Romanesque-House Gothic, Benedict said they even discovered a forgotten cast-iron staircase buried under rubble in the abandoned South-East Wing.
Asked why modern stations lack the grandeur of old Victorian designs, O’Looney said: “Architectural teaching is pretty light in the modern period.
“Young people aren’t directed to life studies which you need to create these forms which the Victorians mastered.”
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After all the expert research and restoration and remaking of ironwork as per original architect Henry Driver’s design by local architect and heritage expert Benny O’Looney – why on earth has Southwark Council and Network Rail decided to make new rear entrance and front square entrances in non-complimentary, non-Henry Driver style modern architecture that detracts and jars and insults Henry Driver’s fine design??
Even if not enough budget to use matching materials, at least make as near to and complementary as possible to the station?!
And council omitting public lavatories (WCs/loos/toilets) from its Peckham Rye Station main public town centre square in front of station due to it says it cannot afford to maintain/clean/service them is not acceptable in view of the appalling public urination (and sometimes defication) done daily outside areas surrounding the station over last 22-years!
Area stinks in hot weather plus flies!! Not acceptable in this day and age and not conducive to encouraging shoppers to station shops or The Arch Company’s expensive rent arches surrounding station, and surely does not meet today’s Environment Health Act?
Council needs to find a way to pay for maintenance Peckham Town Centre Public Toilets at the to be reopened up to Rye Lane – Peckham Rye Station Square same way as other councils do outside their British Rail stations in their towns and cities..?
Maybe a very, very cheap Public Toilets Season Ticket or added into Borough-wide Business and Residents Council Tax..?